Table Of ContentBarbarians to Angels
Also by Peter S. Wells
The Battle That Stopped Rome:
Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter
of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest
Barbarians to Angels
The Dark Ages Reconsidered
Peter S. Wells
W. W. Norton and Company
New York London
Copyright © 2008 by Peter S. Wells All rights reserved For information about
permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Production manager: Julia Druskin Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data Wells, Peter S.
Barbarians to angels : the Dark Ages reconsidered / Peter S. Wells.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-0-39306937-2
1. Middle Ages. 2. Civilization, Medieval.
3. Europe—History—476–1492. I. Title.
D117.W45 2008
940.1'2—dc22
2008002501
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
To My Family
Contents
Preface
1 Between Antiquity and the Middle Ages: What Happened?
2 The Decline of the Roman Empire
3 The Peoples of Europe
4 Childeric and Other Early Dark Age Kings
5 What Happened to the Roman Cities?
6 Roman Londinium to Saxon Lundenwic: Continuity and Change (A.D. 43–
800)
7 New Centers in the North
8 The Revolution in the Countryside
9 Crafting Tools and Ornaments for the New Societies
10 Royal Exchange and Everyday Trade
11 Spread of the New Religion
12 Arts, Scholarship, and Education
13 Charlemagne’s Elephant and the History of Europe
Appendix: Selected Museum Collections
Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Illustration Credits
Preface
IN NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE, WE TRACE THE development of our societies
through the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment,
the Industrial Revolution, and into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But
there is one period that seems to represent a major break in this story of
progressive emergence of civilization—the Dark Ages that followed the glories
of the Roman Empire. Many of our ideas about “barbarians”—illiterate and
violent peoples who invade, loot, and pillage civilized communities—come from
descriptions by late Roman writers of groups they called Alamanni, Franks,
Goths, and Huns. Our popular understanding of the centuries that followed the
decline of the Roman Empire—from A.D. 400 to 800—depends largely on the
picture of barbarian invaders that Edward Gibbon presented in his History of the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published more than two hundred years
ago.
Gibbon portrayed Roman civilization in glorious terms:
In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome
comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of
mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient
renown and disciplined valour. The gentle, but powerful, influence of laws
and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their
peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and
luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent
reverence. The Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority,
and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government.
During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public
administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan,
Hadrian, and the two Antonines.
Among the innumerable monuments of architecture constructed by the
Romans, how many have escaped the notice of history, how few have
resisted the ravages of time and barbarism! And yet even the majestic ruins
that are still scattered over Italy and the provinces would be sufficient to
prove that those countries were once the seat of a polite and powerful
empire.
Thus Gibbon presents the Roman Empire of the late first and second
centuries as a cultural and political paradise.
He then goes on to describe the ravages of the Goths, Vandals, Huns, and
other “barbarian” peoples who brought a violent end to this near-perfect world.
The haughty Rhodogast…marched from the northern extremities of
Germany almost to the gates of Rome, and left the remains of his army to
achieve the destruction of the West. The Vandals, the Suevi, and the
Burgundians formed the strength of this mighty host;…the Alani…added
their active cavalry to the heavy infantry of the Germans…and the Gothic
adventurers…. Twelve thousand warriors, distinguished…by their noble
birth or their valiant deeds, glittered in the van; and the whole multitude,
which was not less than two hundred thousand fighting men, might be
increased by the accession of women, of children, and of slaves, to the
amount of four hundred thousand persons.
Such images of teeming hordes of barbarians descending on the civilized
world of Rome formed the basis of many people’s ideas about the fall of the
Empire and the beginning of the chaos that followed.
According to this view, accepted by many who read and admired Gibbon’s
great historical work, only with Charlemagne about the year A.D. 800 did
European societies again strive to attain the cultural achievements of the
Romans. Charlemagne’s policies fostered the spread of literacy, the rebirth of
Roman-style architecture, and a renewed flourishing of learning and the arts.
From Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire, we can trace a more-or-less
direct line to the Renaissance and modern times.
But there is a fundamental problem with this picture of a four-hundred-year
gap in which barbarism prevailed, and this book presents a different perspective
on the period. The idea of the Dark Ages is a historical relic from the time when
texts were the only source of information about the past, and no one understood
